I've come to talk with you again
by shesasurvivor
Summary: Peeta and Delly share lunch and their lives post-Mockingjay. Everlark, Thelly, canon compliant.


"Here's your sandwich," Peeta says as he hands a packet of wrapped paper to the blonde girl sitting next to him.

"Thanks," she replies. "What's today's special?"

"Wild turkey, courtesy of Katniss's excursion yesterday. And the white bread is from me."

Delly Cartwright laughs at this explanation. "Remind me to thank Katniss later," she tells Peeta.

He feigns a hurt look. "What about me? I made the bread."

"That's not what I mean," Delly bites her lip as she shakes her head. "I mean- I mean, yes, the bread is wonderful! You always do a great job, Peeta," she smiles at him. "And Katniss is so kind to let me eat some of her game every day."

Peeta shrugs. "You know Katniss," he says with a smile. "Few things give her a greater sense of purpose than to feed those she's taken under her wing." And this is true. Outside of the food he dined on in the Capitol, and the year he spent as a Victor after the 74th Games when he had money to buy all the food he could ever need while living alone in that house, he had never eaten as well as he does now. In the mornings there is porridge, or maybe some sort of scramble made from eggs Katniss finds in abandoned nests in the woods (though he notices that mockingjay eggs are never among them). At dinner, they gorge on salads comprised of wild greens, fresh fish, wild strawberries, and whatever meat Katniss brings home that day. The fresh bread he bakes completes their meal. And for lunch, they usually dine on whatever is leftover from the day before. Sure, they could just as easily buy their food; the former victors winnings, now dubbed over as veteran's pay, still arrives regularly from the reformed government. But being able to hunt and forage is so important to Katniss's wellbeing at this point, that Peeta knows there is no way he could deny it to her. Besides, they both agree that the less they have to rely on the Capitol, the better they feel.

"So what do you mean, then? If it's not about lunch?" he asks Delly, giving her a look over. Immediately, Delly flushes, and Peeta reasons he has a good bet as to what-or, really, who-she's going to mention next.

"Katniss has been teaching Thom how to hunt. Well, she's been teaching everyone in the district who wants to learn how to hunt, really, but Thom has been one of them and thanks to her, he brings me home fresh game almost every night!" she gushes, in the long-winded way Peeta has known her to do her entire life. It wouldn't be Delly if she weren't taking ten sentences to say what could be said in two. "Of course, he still isn't as good as her," she continues. "But he's getting there! It makes him so proud, you can just tell!"

Peeta nods, biting back a grin. "I knew she'd be good at it," he says. "I encouraged her to teach people how to hunt. It'd help her keep her mind off things."

"She's doing a very good job!" Delly promises.

"It sounds like it." Peeta gives her a sidelong glance. "So, do you eat dinner with Thom often?" He has to bite his lip to keep from laughing as Delly turns a deep shade of red.

"Oh… um… sometimes!" she admits. "He is my neighbor, you know, and he comes to see me whenever he needs his clothes mended. He tears them a lot," she says.

"I'll bet he does," Peeta grins. "So he eats at your place, or…"

"Both," she admits, then blushes all over again when she realizes her admission. "He asked me over for dinner to repay me for mending his clothes!"

"Uh-huh." Peeta knows good and well that Thom has enough money to simply pay Delly for this service. Since she returned to 12 a few short months ago, Delly has set up a good business for herself as the district's seamstress. Everyone goes to her. Just last week, Katniss brought over a pair of his pants for her to mend. And while it's true that he shares lunch with her several times a week, it has nothing to do with repayment for her sewing, and everything to do with the friendship they've shared their entire lives. Because she's like a sister to him, which means even more to him now that his brothers are gone. And this is how he knows what's really going on.

"I always liked Thom," he tells her. "He helped me carry Gale to Mrs. Everdeen when Thread whipped him. And he brought Katniss back home when she overestimated how much she could handle when she went to the woods after I came home." Peeta had seen him pull up in front of her house with his cart on that day, and carry her inside. A few weeks later, after he and Katniss had tentatively begun testing a friendship again, but already he knew - he knew, no matter how much the voices inside his head screamed at him otherwise - it was only a matter of time for them. Thom had stopped by to purchase some bread from him. As he wrapped the loaf in paper, the question had slipped from his lips before he even had a chance to stop it. Thom told him the whole story of how Katniss, upon returning from the woods and pale at the realization of the work he and his crew were doing, had been too weak to walk the remaining journey back to her house. He had given her a ride and carried her inside to her couch. Peeta thought he could never stop owing Thom for helping Katniss when he should have been there.

"He helped me after the bombing, too, Peeta." Delly says softly, her face going white at the memory. "That night was awful and everything was chaos, and my parents…" She clenches her eyes shut, and Peeta knows the tears she's blinking back. The sight, the feeling of this action is only too familiar for him. After a moment, Delly opens her blue eyes again and stares straight ahead of her. "Thom helped my brother and me reach safety."

There's a weighty silence between them, full of the words neither one of them has to say because they both already know what the other is thinking. _And sometimes_, Peeta, the king of knowing how to master words, thinks to himself,_ the best thing to say is nothing at all_. And so he keeps his words to himself, his thoughts unspoken but not unacknowledged. But this is another thing he knows he owes Thom for: keeping his "sister" alive. Peeta realizes he's beginning to understand Katniss, and the chip she long had on her shoulder (and to some extent, still does) for the bread he once gave that had saved her family's life.

"Why don't you two come over for dinner tonight?" he asks casually. Delly glances at him with nervous excitement.

"Really? You don't think Katniss would mind?"

"No," he says. "She likes Thom. They were both from the Seam." Because try as he might, that's a part of Katniss's life that Peeta will never fully understand, and at this point, he accepts that he should give up trying. There are so many other things about her that he, and only he, can understand anyhow. But he knows having some connection to her old life that hasn't been tainted or destroyed by the Capitol would mean the world to her.

Besides, they need friends.

Delly nods eagerly, then glances at her watch. "I have to get back to work," she tells Peeta. "But we'll be here tonight!"

"Okay," Peeta laughs, watching as Delly dances down the porch stairs and almost crashes into Katniss as she makes her way up the walk, grasping on to a rather full-looking game bag. Delly giggles and offers a greeting and an apology in the same breath, then continues on her way back home.

"What was that about?" Katniss asks Peeta as he presses a kiss to her cheek. He gives her a mysterious smile, and Katniss can see the amusement in his blue eyes reflecting back at her.

"I invited her to dinner," he says. "And she's bringing a friend with her."

* * *

Happy birthday to bigbigbigday006/feeding_geese!

Thanks to Chelzie for her help as a beta reader.


End file.
